I read a piece today on Huffington by Lauren Windsor entitled:
"Top Koch Strategist Argues The Minimum Wage Leads Directly To Fascism." The person to whom the title refers is Richard Fink, a top political consultant to the Kochs and their organizations. Other people present at the political strategy summit to which the article refers were Drs. William Davis Hanson and Will Ruger. Unfortunately I'm having interface issues so I can't link directly to it. In her piece there are some links within where you can get the text of the individual speeches.
In their speeches these people use the word collectivism often. According to them collectivism is bad. . . very bad. Pretty much anything that government does to interfere with business or [individual freedom vis-a-vis whatever you want to do in business irrespective of the effects on third parties] is collectivist.
The substance of my point will appear below the doodle-ma-jig-a-ma-thingy
Let's start by defining "collective". I'll use Merriam Webster because it's pretty representative and I'm all for keeping this brief. According to Merriam Webster collective is defined as:
1: denoting a number of persons or things considered as one group or whole
(flock is a collective word)
2: a: formed by collecting: aggregated b: of a fruit c: multiple
3: a: of, relating to, or being a group of individuals b: involving all members of a
group as distinct from its individuals c: a collective action
4: marked by similarity among or with the members of a group
5: collectivized or characterized by collectivism
-This is a specialized definition which does not apply to the US
because the government as such generally does not own or run
businesses. An exception to this might be the PA State Liquor
stores. Public utilities are regulated by government but not owned
by governments and, so, do not fall under this classification.
6: shared or assumed by all members of the group (collective responsibility)
The Kochs and their advocates benefit from a little rhetorical sleight of hand here in the way of conflating definition 5 with the much more common understanding that everyone has concerning the collective expression which is society and all that those ideas entail, i.e. all the other definitions. It gets flipped to mean that individual freedom trumps the collective integrity of society. Nothing in the US even begins to approach the Soviet system in terms of its accurately being able to be called "collectivist" under definition #5 above. These wealthy oligarchs are really only spending large sums of money to convince people that they need to get more than they already have more than enough of and that anything else is Stalinist.
Interestingly, these same people also throw the term Fascist around a lot. That's quite funny in that one could argue that the partnerships formed between big business and government via. disproportionate access to the legislative process through lobbying legislators is "fascist" or that the way in which de facto power conferred by ownership works concomitantly with law enforcement in limiting free speech and association in protesting is "fascist"; certainly more fascist than any minimum wage legislation.
Let's dig a little more deeply. Under definition #5 above "collectivize" means:
transitive verb
: to organize by collectivism
and "collectivism" means:
1: a political or economic theory advocating collective control
especially over production and distribution; also : a system
marked by such control
2: emphasis on collective rather than individual action or identity
The people who argue that the US is becoming "more collectivist" are wrong. They are wrong factually. They are wrong historically. They are wrong firstly because societies are and always have been, by definition, collective. They attempt to falsely argue that minimum wages, environmental regulations, consumer protections, public safety regulations, womens' rights and monorities rights are effectively government control of the means of production and, as such, is collectivism according to definition #5 above.
Yes, we should probably be more collectivist. Majoritarianism is a collectivist idea but certainly not according to a standard arrived at via definition #5 above. The majority of people want minimum wage laws that protect them against predatory employers. Furthermore, people want minimum wage laws that will enable them to participate in society in ways other than laboring for someone else. People should not be expected to labor for someone who will not give them what they need to thrive as a part of the great collective of society.
We live in groups; we live as a collective because we can benefit from increased access to resources, pool labor and effort and, as the result, we all realize less environmental pressure, greater ability to recover from natural disaster and a greater ability to affect our immediate physical environment to make the overall quality of life better for all participants. We can do more collectively than as individuals.
vocabulary.com defines it thusly:
Collective is a word that describes a group of people acting together. A prom might turn into a smashing success through the collective efforts of the student body.
The word collective indicates a group, and is often used in opposition to the efforts or will of an individual. Your neighbor who is the only one on the block who refuses to mow her lawn? She's going against the collective. A commune is a type of collective living situation, in which several families might live together and contribute for the benefit of the whole. If you work well with others, then you appreciate how collective efforts can often result in better results.
From the integrity of the group comes the ability of individuals to enjoy greater opportunity for self determination.
We arrive at this by enacting rules that everyone is expected to follow to ensure the integrity of the system. We all pay into a common fund on which we draw to pay for infrastructure, defense, law enforcement and services. We all ought to work to provide for our own needs as much as we can. We all ought to refrain from abrogating freedoms of others consistent with those we expect to be observed by others. All of this takes place within the system and in terms of what the system allocates as units of wealth, goods in barter or kind or whatever.
The question is: "Where in society must the freedom of the individual be subordinated to the collective will such that the continued viability of the larger social entity by which individual freedoms are granted is strengthened and prolonged?".
This is the way we must frame the debate in opposition to those who play word games in service of misrepresenting facts. These wealthy oligarchs are really only spending large sums of money to convince people that they need to get more than they already have more than enough of and that anything else is Stalinist.
The problem is really one of semantics. The Kochs and their toadies are playing word games. We need to understand that the idea of collectivism as such is being misused, which is why it's important to understand that society is, by definition, a collective. Operating individually and, by extension, collectively - each doing their part/job/task/whatever, we realize the benefits of doing many jobs which, collectively, make our standard of living possible. The Kochs and their ilk are making the case that we'd have 200k more jobs if there were no minimum wage protection for the lowest paid of the working class. They don't admit that they spend everything they earn until they reach the point where they have surplus income so that money does its job by actually circulating. People buying more goods because of increased wages means that companies' gross earnings increase and everything along with it except for the bearing out of the puritan mandate that you suffer because it's a moral failing if you can't manage to earn sufficient means because you work for a greedy sob. The level at which one has surplus income is significantly higher than any minimum wage that has ever been in force in the US.
The Kochs and their like believe that they have no responsibility to those below them from whose labor they benefit. If they can't break out of poverty it's their fault; emphasis on fault here.
Interestingly, the Kochs and their ilk want access to as much information about all of us as they can get through private means. Consider for a moment what that means. All your financial information, medical information - any transaction for anything that isn't government benefits is in the private domain. Once they have information about you they own it under the current interpretation of the law. They can do anything they want with it. That might mean using it to determine whether or not you've met their standard by which you deserve access to the benefits of society. Currently that standard is access to private wealth. Since this is private and not government they see it as not being oppressive because governments oppress through force whereas you, on the other hand, participate voluntarily in market activity and therefore is, by definition, not oppression.
So. . . going back to definition #5:
Wealthy industrialists like the Kochs and their ilk certainly don't want any government to tell them that they must pay people fairly because they claim that's "collectivist. . . yet they sure do want a government that'll enforce what's in their interest to have enforced. How is that any less collectivist under definition #5? I'd argue that their libertarianism under their definition of "the rule of law" is MORE collectivist it will manifest as a small group of powerful people taking for themselves from a larger group of less powerful like in "Animal Farm" yet they'll claim it's not because the mechanism is private rather than government ownership. That seems MUCH more dictatorial to me than a law passed by an elected government that says they must pay a fair living wage for labor out of which they reap all the surplus value.